


Stolen Dance

by noblydonedonnanoble



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 03:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3234356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/noblydonedonnanoble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I want you / We can bring it on the floor / Never danced like this before / We don't talk about it"</p><p>David encounters Catherine at a post-NTA party</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stolen Dance

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is very AU-friendly; if you want to imagine it as taking place in our universe, that works. If you prefer to imagine David as not being married, that works too.

                From the moment David spots her across the room, he gets the sense that he’s going to do something profoundly daft.

                This is probably at least partially related to the two bottles of beer that he’s downed since the evening began—not that much, perhaps, but he’s always been a lightweight and those two drinks have been enough to make him giddy and a bit too reckless for his own good.

                Catherine, in fact, has always had a rather same effect. She makes him giddy and bold and that’s why he usually tries not to drink when he knows that he’s going to see her. Because he’ll be intoxicated enough from her presence as it is.

                But he hadn’t been expecting to see her at this party. He doesn’t know why; it now feels like quite the oversight.

                She’s in the middle of a conversation with some producer, but her eyes stray for just a moment and she catches him staring. She smiles, an automatic response but there’s genuine warmth there that hits David hard in many places all at once. He swallows and looks away instead of smiling back.

                There’s a dull ache in his chest after that. He feels like something’s eating him alive from the inside out and it doesn’t matter how many friendly faces he encounters, how many hugs and congratulations he’s receiving; it doesn’t stop the pounding in his ears and the empty feeling inside him because he knows that Catherine is there and he would like to talk to her, thank her for her kind words.

                (The kind things that she never says to his face because she claims that he hears it enough from other people, so she doesn’t need to fluff his ego.)

                He’d like to speak face to face, to look her in the eye… because that happens nowhere near enough for his liking.

                It would be easier if…

                Let’s just say it’s not easy.

                Catherine takes the choice out of his hands when she appears at his side about half an hour later. David is in the middle of a conversation that he would rather like to escape as soon as possible, so the sight of Catherine is an immense relief.

                As soon as he’s extracted himself from the conversation, though, he is standing alone with Catherine and becomes startlingly aware that he’s nearly finished off another bottle of beer; that her hair is practically sparkling under the lights in the room; that her hand bumps his quickly when she reaches up to brush her fringe out of her eyes.

                “I thought you could use some help getting out of that,” she tells him kindly.

                “You thought right. I was about ready to start screaming.”

                “So I came just in the nick of time.”

                David hums in the affirmative. “And I wanted to find you anyway.”

                “Oh?” Catherine’s eyes are bright and penetrating and playful and he feels like he might never be able to find his way out of them. “I’m pleased to hear that you’ll still engage with the little people now that you’ve made it big.”

                “Funny,” he replies. His tone is flat but he’s grinning stupidly.

                She looks at him so tenderly. Now, especially, but she does it all the time. He doesn’t know if she ever tries to hide it, but if she does, she doesn’t do a particularly good job.

                “Congratulations,” she says after a slight pause. “You deserved it.”

                “Thank you. For everything you said in that… thing, too. It was beautiful.”

                “Do you think so? I was actually a bit disappointed. They took out all of the rude things I said afterward.”

                His heart pounds and he takes a massive gulp of his beer because otherwise he would feel too tempted to kiss her.

                Third bottle of the night, and he’s smiling so wide his face hurts. His stomach has contorted itself into a bundle and he glances between her and the dance floor, saying abruptly, “Want to go dance?”

                She takes in the music that’s playing throughout the room. It’s something loud and poppy and it’s no wonder that she looks at him a bit skeptically, asks, “Really?”

                And fine, maybe it’s not really his kind of music but it gives him an excuse to be close to her. Right now he’s drunk on winning and on beer and there’s nothing that he wants as much as he wants to feel Catherine pressed against him, if only for a few minutes, so that he can be drunk on that too. “Sure. Everyone else on the dance floor is too sloshed to know what they’re doing, so it’s not like we’d look bad. Just for a song or two.”

                He couldn’t say if he grabs her hand or if she grabs his but seconds later they are squeezing through the crowd to reach the mass of people dancing.

                The moment they reach the floor, David doesn’t even hesitate to pull her close, so that her back is nearly touching his front. He maintains his grip on her hand, and with his free hand he grasps at her hip. As he begins to sway them to the steady drum beat in the music, he leans down so that he can speak into her ear and be heard over the cacophony. “Do you remember the last time we danced like this?”

                “No.” She sounds genuinely surprised. Surely that’s the sort of thing she’d remember.

                But he smiles, and Catherine can feel his lips on the lobe of her ear. “I suppose that’s not surprising. It was the night you got drunk. That was about the time I started to realize something was off, when you brought me out on the dance floor and started leaning against me like this.”

                “Because why would I want to dance with you?”

                David lets out a hollow laugh. He knows she’s teasing but it hits him hard anyway. “Exactly. You wouldn’t.”

                Her thumb rubs along the back of his hand, and it’s so smooth and light that he thinks he might be imagining things until he glances down and sees her doing it. He swallows nervously, closing his eyes and trying to tune out everything around them. He takes in that feeling of her hand in his; of her body so close; he takes in the smell of her perfume, something soft that reminds him of countless days and nights spent with her two lifetimes ago.

                He nuzzles her neck, and her shoulder, and his lips might meet her skin but he doesn’t kiss it, not really.

                Catherine is breathing rapidly, despite the languid way in which they’re moving. She turns her head just slightly and for a second David thinks that she’s going to reach up and try to kiss him, but if that thought had crossed her mind, she must think better of it because she doesn’t.

                When she eventually slips out of his grasp and turns to face him, he’s hardly even aware of it as she bids him farewell and presses a lingering kiss to his cheek. And she drifts off into the crowd with another murmur of congratulations that doesn’t even register until she’s well out of sight.

                There’s a buzzing in his ears for the rest of the night.


End file.
